NIGERIANS know what to expect when they approach police checkpoints.
“How can you appreciate me?” ask officers, AK-47s dangling languidly
from their shoulders. “Happy weekend!” say security guards from the
early hours of Friday morning. Or simply: “What do you have for me?”
Nigeria, as David Cameron, Britain’s former prime minister, pointed out,
is “fantastically corrupt”. In Transparency International’s Corruption
Perceptions Index, it is 31st from the bottom. Nigeria’s president,
Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler, wants to change this. How is
he doing?
Few doubt Mr Buhari’s intent. But the task he has set
himself is Herculean. Successive military and civilian governments have
siphoned money from the vast revenues of their oil industry. Many locals
think the problem reached unprecedented heights under the previous
administration of Goodluck Jonathan. In March an official audit found
that the state-owned oil company withheld over $25 billion from the
public purse between 2011 and 2015. Meanwhile cartels involving
government officials, militants and oil employees stole tens of
thousands of barrels of crude each day. A savings account was drained,
although oil prices were high for most Mr Jonathan’s tenure. And money
which was supposed to arm soldiers against Boko Haram insurgents was
squandered: the vice-president recently estimated that the previous
regime diverted $15 billion through dodgy arms contracts.
Since Mr
Buhari came to power in May 2015, dozens of public officials and their
cronies have been arrested by a beefed-up Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC). The most famous of those, the former national
security adviser Sambo Dasuki, is charged with dishing out $2 billion
worth of fake contracts for helicopters, aeroplanes and ammunition.
Under new management, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has
grown slightly less opaque: it now publishes monthly financial reports.
Shady “swap” contracts which trade crude oil for refined petrol have
been renegotiated and the worst of the last regime’s oil deals are under
scrutiny. The chairman of one local company, Atlantic Energy, was
arrested last year, shortly after the ex-petroleum minister was arrested
in London. In all, the government claims to be recovering about $10
billion of stolen assets (though most of those will be tied up in court
for years). It has also cancelled a fuel-subsidy racket which, at its peak, cost Nigerians $14 billion a year.
Mr
Buhari’s government has been learning from other crusading countries,
such as Georgia. But not everyone is impressed. His political opponents,
who ruled Nigeria for 16 years until 2015, call the campaign a
witch-hunt. There are reasons to doubt the capacity of the
anti-corruption agency—and of the courts—to hold the powerful to
account. The EFCC is yet to send down any of its most influential
adversaries, though it is splurging on training for prosecutors. Most
government agencies, including the one that collects taxes, do not make
their budgets public. Nor do most state and local governments, which
suck up about half of public revenues. In an effort to fix this, a
tenacious finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, has told skint governors that
they must make their finances public before they receive a second
federal bailout. She has struck thousands of ghost workers off the
public payroll. Her “treasury single account” may be the biggest coup of
all. It replaced a labyrinth of government piggy banks, giving Nigeria
more control of its earnings. Financiers reckon that it could serve as a
lesson to others in West Africa as well. The continent’s most famously
corrupt country might yet teach others a thing or two about
transparency.